Trump administration & electronic health records

By Andrew Wagner | Published Thursday, March 8, 2018

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The Trump administration’s Office of American Innovation has begun work on an overhaul of electronic medical record systems across the government. Citing a lack of communication between different agencies, the MyHealthEData initiative aims to interconnect data from several federal systems. Organizations that have signed onto the OAI proposal include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“If you think about the ways that healthcare touches Americans, it’s through so many agencies,” said Frank Baitman, Former Chief Information Officer at HHS. “HHS obviously has a leadership role, but so do agencies like the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. They need to work together to make sure that single standards are used to share information, so that all Americans can have equal access to their health information.”

As for the timeline, Melissa Chapman, Former Chief Information Officer at HHS and vice president of Health IT at Salient CRGT, said that the government should aim to make easy access to health records a priority, even if the systems might not be fully integrated for a while.

“We certainly want access as soon as possible, even if it’s not yet ideally interoperable,” Chapman told Government Matters. “Secretary Azar mentioned this week that he is very excited about how consumers can control the cost, and achieve greater value in the healthcare they recieve. Interoperability is key to that, to make access easier.”